Tom Garrett Went 2-5 With a Home Run In Only Professional Baseball Game

Published on November 6th, 2024 6:38 pm EST
Written By: Dave Manuel


Here is a nearly impossible piece of trivia:

Who are the two professional baseball players that hit home runs in their first and ONLY professional baseball games?

The answer: Horace Davis and Tom Garrett.

Let's start with Tom Garrett, who appeared in his only recorded professional baseball game in 1930 while playing for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro National League.

In his only game, Garrett went 2-for-5 with a home run and a RBI. In addition, Garrett scored two runs.

What happened to Garrett after this game? We don't know - there is no record of what happened to Garrett after his very productive game in 1930. Why didn't he remain with the team? What happened? Did Garrett decide to leave baseball for a specific reason? We might never know.

Horace Davis is the other player that hit a home run in his first and only professional baseball game.

Davis did it with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1938.

In that game, Davis went 1-for-4 with a two-run home run.

Again, we don't know exactly what happened to Horace Davis and why he doesn't have any more recorded games.

Was he cut? Did he leave the team voluntarily? Did he decide that baseball wasn't for him?

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A pile of statistics from a variety of different leagues was recently incorporated by Major League Baseball.

By poring through the data, we can see some pretty interesting anomalies, such as Horace Davis and Tom Garrett hitting home runs in their first and only professional baseball games.